Vermont Is Gearing Up to Strike a Major Blow to Corporate Personhood, Ban It Statewide

[marmar]

AlterNet / By Christopher Ketcham

Vermont Is Gearing Up to Strike a Major Blow to Corporate Personhood, Ban It Statewide
On the anniversary of the Citizens United decision, Vermont politicians are moving to deny corporations the rights that humans enjoy.

January 22, 2011 |


A year ago today, the Supreme Court issued its bizarre Citizens United decision, allowing unlimited corporate spending in elections as a form of “free speech” for the corporate “person.” Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the dissent, had the task of recalling the majority to planet earth and basic common sense.

"Corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires," wrote Stevens. "Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their 'personhood' often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of 'We the People' by whom and for whom our Constitution was established."

Fortunately, movements are afoot to reverse a century of accumulated powers and protections granted to corporations by wacky judicial decisions.

In Vermont, state senator Virginia Lyons earlier today presented an anti-corporate personhood resolution for passage in the Vermont legislature. The resolution, the first of its kind, proposes "an amendment to the United States Constitution ... which provides that corporations are not persons under the laws of the United States." Sources in the state house say it has a good chance of passing. This same body of lawmakers, after all, once voted to impeach George W. Bush, and is known for its anti-corporate legislation. Last year the Vermont senate became the first state legislature to weigh in on the future of a nuclear power plant, voting to shut down a poison-leeching plant run by Entergy Inc. Lyons’ Senate voted 26-4 to do it, demonstrating the level of political will of the state’s politicians to stand up to corporate power. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/news/149620/vermont_is_gearing_up_to_strike_a_major_blow_to_corporate_personhood%2C_ban_it_statewide/

[DrDan]

1. good for Vermont!!

[molly77]

19. Vt. is the most independent state in the union

The new gov. is working on single payer insurance for all Vermonters as a way to bring in business.

[DrDan]

33. sure hope it works - nothing better for our SP cause than a success like that

[HereSince1628]

2. Corporations aren't people, they are groups of people

bound by profit motive and led by boards composed of boyars who see themselves as Cheney's "Political Class"

[ThomThom]

27. people who already have the right to vote and donate money

Corporations are not people and should have no rights only obligations. Like the obligation to provide good to society. They should not have eternal life either. Twenty or thirty years at the most.

[HereSince1628]

28. It's the conglomeration thing that bothers me more.

I can't imagine things like life insurance corporations having a limited life-span, but maybe that is possible. I think that insurance is a good example of a non-manufacturing purpose for which money needs to be pooled.

In general, corporations should be brought together to do some defined purpose which serves the public good, and to whom money can be entrusted to carry out that purpose. Conglomerations work only to squeeze profit out of subsidiaries and make money for the investors. The investors are only a subgroup of the public. The requirement to serve the public good must be larger than to make money for investors. While conglomerating might be argued as "efficiency" it is also the path to oligopoly and monopoly. Both of those conditions empower the few to manipulate the market and exploit the public both through inflated pricing and undue influence of government.

[ThomThom]

29. I had not thought about insurance companies

maybe we need different kinds or maybe they need to be not for profit. Maybe we don't need insurance corporations at all. If we had more co-ops and people banned together in that way things might work better. Huge multinational corporations are sucking us dry just to enrich a small group of people.

[HereSince1628]

32. Maybe, though the downside of insurance through a mutual or co-op is that

the consumer must take on a share of the responsibility for the obligations of the organization. If that's limited to money that's spent as a consumer of the co-op's product or service that's fine, but there was a time when that wasn't true. I don't know if in some states it still may be true.

I remember just before I left for Vietnam, my parents received a bill for over $500 as part of a settlement obligation involving a mutual insurance corp that they had a policy with before I was born. I'm pretty sure that for the poor and working poor that sort of risk isn't a good thing. Considering the way that the robber barons have gamed regulations and laws, I think everyone must guard against that sort of thing creeping back.

One of the advantages to incorporation is limiting risk. Historically, the responsibility for risks falls onto the owners of a business venture. If you can only lose what you've invested, the risk of a stockholder and a big chunk of consumer risk, then investments get made with money that the investor knows may be lost.

[xchrom]

3. the part i like

'"Corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires," wrote Stevens. "Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their 'personhood' often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of 'We the People' by whom and for whom our Constitution was established."

[Ozymanithrax]

4. If this part is true...an amendment to the United States Constitution ...

then they are banning nothing. It will require 2/3rds of the states to ask for an amendment to the Constitution.

This has the same effect of pissing your pants in a dark suit. It gives you a warm feeling, but nobody notices.

Let me know when a full 2/3rds of the states reject Corporate Personhood.

[Raksha]

16. It has to start with one state, doesn't it? Vermont is just the first one.

I hope California will be next.

[quakerboy]

24. But then you have to get to 2/3, If I recall

Not to mention the house and senate and president.

Which 66 senators?
Which 290 Congressmen
Which 31 additional states after Vermont and California?

Barring a major political shift, I do not see it happening. Not that its not a meaningful and inspiring gesture. Not that its not worth doing. But hoping that it will come to any actual action seems doomed to disappointment.

[On the Road]

5. Wow -- That is a Different Way to Approach It

I thought it would take a constitutional amendment. Wonder how the Vermont position is going to play out in the courts.

[Demeter]

6. This Should Go Nationwide

Not sure they have a legal leg to stand on....the Supreme Court being what it is...

[handmade34]

7. rec for sure

[neverforget]

8. Cool. Only 37 more states willing to ratify a Constitutional amendment

and two-thirds of the House and Senate willing to pass it. Or two-thirds of the States calling for a Constitutional Convention.

http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution/

Thanks to Scalia, Roberts, Thomas, Alito and Kennedy, we're stuck with this abomination for a long time to come....if we survive as a Free country.

[Moostache]

9. On the short list of places I am interested in moving to...

being currently stuck in once-purple-but-now-scarlet-red 'Missurah' (or as I think of it now - Eastern Kansas), I currently exploring ways to move my career path and family to the East Coast...I would go West if it weren't still so damned expensive!

Go Vermont! Lead the way out of this corporate/right-wing stupor that our entire nation (including our Democratic president and his administration) have fallen prey to...

[mbperrin]

10. Good for Vermont!

Someone needs to take a stand, and it probably won't be my beloved state of Texas, run over 20 years now by corporate bastards...

[democrank]

11. Vermont is a very special place.

[defendandprotect]

12. Fantastic -- very thing that should be happening across the nation--!! Where's Congress-??

This is what is controlling our lives -- and instaad of Obama making

back room deals with this monster, he should be speaking out for its

banning every day of the year!!

[defendandprotect]

13. Ah, States Rights ... remember when the GOP used to be for that -- pre Bush vs Gore --!!

[Enthusiast]

31. Excellent point.

They were for it before they were against it, lol.

[maryf]

14. They're also implementing single payer health care...

and wanted to secede a while back... kr

[Kurovski]

15. K&R. (nt)

[Kurovski]

17. A snippet more...

" The resolution goes on to note that "large corporations own most of America's mass media and employ those media to loudly express the corporate political agenda and to convince Americans that the primary role of human beings is that of consumer... "

[Arctic Dave]

18. Very interested to see how this will play out.

Would love to see several more States, mine included, to follow their lead.

[bertman]

20. Even the longest journey must begin with the first step. Thank you, Vermont.

P.S. someone else came up with that journey/step saying a long time ago.

REC.

[MasonJar]

21. Good for Vermont. If it weren't so cold, I might move there.

[lfairban]

22. Maybe this will help.

I ran across this site supporting a constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United:

http://movetoamend.org/

[Phlem]

23. I wish I lived there.

Sounds like the last bastion of " We the People".

I'd be out on the street every night!!

Around where I live being out at night is a health hazard. If not for the weather, The ignorant will get you.

-p

[DesertDiamond]

25. I pray California is next, and all the other 48 to follow close behind!

[Sherman A1]

26. Excellent!

Thanks for posting!

[Enthusiast]

30. K&R Wonderful nt

[jerseyjack]

34. I'm callling my lose assembly reps tomorrow.

"Where's N.J. on this?

[Smarmie Doofus]

35. Why, that's....... INHUMAN!!! K and R n/t

[Smarmie Doofus]

36. "Wacky" judicial decisions? Sounds like a Jerry Lewis movie.

>>>>Fortunately, movements are afoot to reverse a century of accumulated powers and protections granted to corporations by wacky judicial decisions.>>>>

"Demented" might be a better choice of words. That conjures up, not the genial Lewis but the deranged Peter Lorre or Bela Lugosi at his most hideous.

But K and R anyway.... and to Vermont: those of us about to die in the other forty-nine states salute you.

[briteleaf]

37. The corporate rule rules.

Corporations should have individual rights only when the entire corporation can be jailed for violating the law. Corporations run this country now. Their rights and control over our elected officials decide who will be elected.They control congress with thousands of lobbyists and Exxon Mobil paid less taxes last year than a single-parent dishwasher.

[Recursion]

38. But "corporate personhood" is the only way corporations can be sued

That's where the doctrine originally came from.